News

A one week Introduction to Geographical Information Systems (GIS) course was hosted at the College of Medicine, Blantyre Malawi in May 2019. The course was delivered with the support of two LSTM projects, PIIVeC (Partnership for Increasing the Impact of Vector Control) and GIVeS (Geographical Information for Vector Surveillance) and involved 25 participants from a range of Malawian organisations. These included the National Malaria Control Programme, Malaria Alert Centre (MAC), Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme (MLW), College of Medicine among others. The training was conducted by Michelle Stanton from Lancaster University, Tiago Canelas from LSTM and supported by James Chirombo from MLW.

The first annual PIIVeC’s TVCAG meeting in Cameroon was held at the Monastère Notre Dame des Bénédictins of the Mont Fébé in Yaoundé, from the 4th to the 5th December 2018. Stakeholders from various Ministers (Public Health, Scientific Research, Agriculture and Livestock’s), research centres, universities and NGOs (VESTERGAARD, CPAC..), involved in vector-borne diseases control, have successfully being brought together. Many of them appreciated the PIIVeC initiative, took advantage to establish contacts and advocated for the sustainability of the initiative. The Ministry of Public Health stakeholders were fully involved with the opening and closing ceremonies done respectively by the Director of operational Research and the Director of Health promotion, and a session chaired by the Deputy Director of Disease Control. Also, Permanent secretaries in charge of malaria, filariasis, trypanosomiasis and Leishmaniasis programs attended the meeting.

We are currently holding a training event in Liverpool, bringing together in one place our 10 African postdoctoral fellows. The PIIVeC fellows form the core of individual capacity strengthening activities for the programme. They are post-doctoral level researchers from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Malawi, and Kenya working on various aspects of vector-borne disease control.

On 15 June 2018, the PIIVeC team in Burkina Faso organised a launch event to introduce the project to stakeholders from multiple sectors.

LSTM’s Professor Hilary Ranson is a plenary speaker at the 7th MIM Pan African Malaria Conference being held in Dakar, Senegal this week.